Ardour 5.0 – an open source digital audio workstation – is now available for Linux, OS X and, for the first time, Windows.
This is a major release featuring substantial updates to the GUI and major new features related to mixing, plugin use, tempo maps, scripting and more.
Ardour 5.0 can be parallel-installed with older versions of the program, and does not use the same preference files. It will load sessions from Ardour 2, 3 and 4, though with some potential minor changes.
Windows Now Supported
This is the first version of Ardour with official Windows support. The developers note, though, that they do not offers support for installing Ardour on Windows, issues with audio hardware or system- or user-specific issues. If you have issues actually doing stuff with Ardour, or there are generic problems affecting all Windows users, they say they will try to provide Windows users with the same kind of assistance that we do on Linux and OS X.
Here are the key new features in Ardour 5:
- Control Masters (VCAs)
- Tempo Ramps
- Lua Scripting
- Sidechaining and Pin Connections
- Plugin Inline Display
- Built-in Plugins
- MIDI Busses
- OSC
- Theming
- GUI Changes
- Improved Control Surface Support
- Export updates
A complete guide to what’s new is available on their site.
I had played with Ardour 4 a little under macOS, as well as under Linux with the iConnectivity devices (the iCA2+ and iCA4+ work well with Linux), recording live audio as well as both MIDI and audio from iPads in Ardour (on Linux 🙂 ).
I’m building Ardour 5 from source now to see how things have changed. I’ll probably drop a line back here and LYAK when it’s finished compiling and I’ve had a look over it.
It’s been an interesting week, what with Tracktion 5 also being free now 🙂 (and, again, working well with iConnectivity devices on Linux to be able to likewise record on Linux from live audio and other devices like iPads too)
Do I run a studio on Linux? No 🙂 I run Studio One, Pro Tools, Logic, Live, Cubase and Reaper on a mix of Mac and PC setups 😀 but I have an interest in working with audio on Linux sometimes, and having Ardour and now Tracktion available gives some interesting choices. I’ve also been exploring Carla as a VST host on Linux recently too, and it works very nicely for a great number of VSTs and VSTis.
Anyhow, back to Ardour 5. Going to let the compile churn for a little while. BBiaB…
Prefer using Bitwig (for it’s UI) with Jack and Carla with (A lot of free) LV2 plug-ins and it is quite interesting and promising. The major thing holding back on building a real studio setup with Linux is the limited support for audio interfaces, (Don’t mind the plug-ins much, using hardware). So far the 18i20 Focusrite (2nd gen) is the most affordable and good quality interface but limited to 16 physical channels. Its a long wait for Thunderbolt and AVB support.
I tried Bitwig. Didn’t like the interface 🙂 .
Just goes to show there are a lot of opinions and options and some things suit some more than others 🙂
Good to have the variety.
What you mention in terms of other support is one of the major reasons I don’t use Linux for audio work, preferring macOS (I still run a Windoze studio too.) I can’t run Studio One Pro, or Pro Tools, or Logic Pro on Linux. Or Sibelius. Or Notion. Or Waves. Or East West. Or my hardware editor / librarians. Or ….
… let alone yes, the driver support lacking.
Still. It’s nice to be able to use in some limited capacities some of the time.
I’m currently investigating using Carla as a host for Windoze VSTs in particular so I can retire my Windoze machine and replace it with a Mac hopefully in due time, and keep on using the Windoze VSTs via Carla on a separate box. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t ditched Windoze entirely yet – the lack of support for some of the VSTs and VSTis that I use on Windoze on macOS. So, using Linux as a nice bridge for those may work out well.
Still, again, back to Ardour 5. It looks like they’ve made some good improvements here, and the visibility on Windoze as a platform will help its adoption probably.
(Just to add, I *love* Linux generally for other things than A/V. – Been using it since ’93 as my main desktop and programming environment 😀 )
The big news here actually is that it now has a Windows version. So far, I don’t know of any free Windows DAWs that are up-to-date and meets my work’s needs. I’ve tried Ardour in OSX, but eventually left it in favor of an affordable cross-platform DAW because of my Windows only plug-ins. Looking forward to the Windows version being usable for more serious work!